Do Certifications Matter?

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A degree in CS might be valuable depending on how much the student really sunk himself into it. There are people that are proud that they don’t understand binary and hex and do not understand memory hierarchy, processor architecture and all the underlying concepts that everything is built on.

If you don’t understand the relationship between hardware and software you are practicing voodoo. Everything will be magic to you and are worthless as a programmer.

As for certs, I have met far too many Java certified programmers that couldn’t tell you or misunderstand what references are and why Java does not ever use pass by reference. No, this is not trivia, it is critical to understanding what your code in doing under the covers.

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You know, it’s funny. I have a shat-load of certifications but all that shows is that I prepared for my test and studied the information that would actually be on the test.

It speaks nothing of my deep experience with said software or hardware technologies. Like college degrees, they mean nothing by themselves, it’s based more on theoretical knowledge or events that rarely, if ever happen in the real world.

As you said, “Show me what you’ve worked on in the past, what you doing now and where you see yourself going with this knowledge in say, five years”.

On a side note:
I never did like the Sun Microsystems certification programs, I’m glad Oracle bought out Sun Microsystems.

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